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Those who refused to acknowledge the authority of the Council of Chalcedon were originally called Haesitantes; the Acephali developed from among them, and, according to Blunt, the earlier name – Haesitantes – seems to have been used for only a short time.[3](p180)

The term applied to a 5th-century faction among the Eutychians, who seceded from Peter, a Monophysite or more accurately a Miaphysite, in 482,[4] after Peter signed the Henoticon and was recognised by Zeno as the legitimate patriarch of Alexandria by which they were "deprived of their head".[1]They remained "without king or bishop"[this quote needs a citation] until they were reconciled with Coptic OrthodoxPope Mark II of Alexandria (799–819).[citation needed] The condemnation of Eutyches irritated the rigid Monophysites; the equivocal attitude taken towards the Council of Chalcedon appeared to them insufficient, and many of them, especially the monks, deserted Peter, preferring to be without a head, rather than remain in communion with him.[4] Later, they joined the adherents of the non-Chalcedonian Patriarch Severus of Antioch.[4] They were, according to Oxford English Dictionary Online, a "group of extreme Monophysites"[5] and "were absorbed by the Jacobites".[2]

Esaianites were one of the sects into which the Alexandrian Acephali separated at the end of the 5th century. They were the followers of Esaias, a deacon of Palestine, who claimed to have been consecrated to the episcopal office by the Bishop Eusebius. His opponents averred that after the bishop's death his hands had been laid upon the head of Esaias by some of his friends.[3](p148)

Paulitae were a sect of Acephali who followed Chalcedonian Patriarch Paul of Alexandria, who was deposed by a synod at Gaza, in 541, for his uncanonical consecration by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and who, after his deposition, sided with the Miaphysites.[3](p415)[a]

Barsanians, later called Semidalites, were a sect of Acephali at the end of the 5th century. They had no succession of priests, and professed to keep up the celebration of a valid Eucharist by placing a few crumbs of some of the bread which had been consecrated by Dioscorus into a vessel of meal, and then using as fully consecrated the bread baked from it.[3](p551)

According to Brewer, acephalites were also certain bishops exempt from the jurisdiction and discipline of their patriarch.[1] Cooper explains that they are "priests rejecting episcopal authority or bishops that of their metropolitans."[2] Blunt described clerici acephali as those clergy who were ordained with a sinecurebenefice and who generally obtained their orders by paying for them, that is by simony. The Council of Pavia, in 853, legislated its canons 18 and 23 against them, from which it appears, according to Blunt, that they were mostly chaplains to noblemen, that they produced much scandal in the Church, and that they disseminated many errors.[3](p109)

According to Brewer, acephalites were also a sect of Levellers during the reign of Henry I of England who acknowledged no leader.[1] They were, according to Oxford English Dictionary Online, "a group of free socagers having no feudal superior except the king." This usage is now considered obsolete.[5]

^ abcde This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Brewer, E. Cobham (1900). "Acephalites". Dictionary of phrase and fable : giving the derivation, source, or origin of common phrases, allusions, and words that have a tale to tell (New ed.). London: Cassell. p. 9. OCLC586047493. Retrieved 2014-10-22.